Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body

by Reginald A. Ray

Overview

What does it mean to "meditate with the body"? Until you answer this question, explains Reggie Ray, meditation may be no more than a mental gymnastic —something you can practice for years without fruitful results.

In Touching Enlightenment, the esteemed author of five books about Buddhist history and practice guides you back to the original practice of the Buddha: a systematic process that results in a profound awareness in your body rather than in your head.

Combining the scholarship that has earned him international renown with original insights from nearly four decades practicing and teaching meditation, Reggie Ray invites you to explore:

• How to enter fully into communion with your embodied nature
• The insights of Tibetan yoga, from guidance on breathing and working with discomfort to its challenge to modern practitioners on the path to realization
• Why "rejected" experience becomes imprinted in the body —and how to receive it anew to reconstitute your human way of being
• Karma of cause and karma of result —taking full responsibility for your life
• Your three bodies—the physical, the interpersonal, and the cosmic

"To be awake, to be enlightened, is to be fully and completely embodied. To be fully embodied means to be at one with who we are, in every respect, including our physical being, our emotions, and the totality of our karmic situation," writes Reggie Ray. In Touching Enlightenment, he offers you a map of unprecedented clarity and power for embarking on the journey toward ultimate realization in and through the body.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781591796183
Publisher:	Sounds True, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/28/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Reginald A. Ray

Reginald A. Ray, PhD, is the cofounder and spiritual director of Dharma Ocean Foundation, dedicated to the evolution and flowering of the somatic teachings of Tibetan Tantra. He is a lineage holder in the tradition of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Reggie is the author of several books including Touching Enlightenment and The Awakening Body. He makes his residence in Crestone and Boulder, Colorado. For more, visit dharmaocean.org.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     xi
Preface     xv
Introduction
Touching Enlightenment with the Body     3
What Has Become of the Buddha's Dharma?     6
The Call of the Forest     10
The Ultimate Challenge of Buddhism     13
Our Somatic Disembodiment
Modern Buddhism and Global Crisis     21
Our Physical Divestment     28
Our Emotional Disconnection     31
Some Historical Roots of Our Modern Disembodiment     35
Meditating without the Body     44
The Somatic Challenge of Tibetan Yoga     50
Engaging the Process: Meditating with the Body
The Call to Return     57
How Do We Proceed?     61
Entering the Gate     66
Discomfort in the Somatic Practice     73
The Background and Process of Discomfort     79
The Process of Letting Go     84
The Unfolding Journey     88
The Body's Own Agenda     91
Understanding the Process of Meditating with the Body
The Importance of Non-conceptual Understanding in the Body Work and Where Concepts Are Needed     99
What the Body Knows     105
What Happens to What Is Rejected?     109
An Example     116
Karma of Cause, Karma of Result     121
Our Unlived Life     126
The Body and Its Dimensions: The Full Extent of the Karma of Result     129
The Moment of Greatest Alienation     133
Beyond the Reactivity of Ego     140
Empowerment     145
Impersonal and Individual     151
The "Good News" of Chaos     157
The Body of the Buddha     166
Dynamics of the Path Principles, Practices, and Experiences
Developing Peace: Somatic Shamatha     177
Are We Willing to See? Somatic Vipashyana     182
Falling Apart     186
Tracking Our Emotions     191
Trusting Our Emotions     195
Imagination in the Body Work     200
A Tibetan Yoga Approach to Physical Pain     209
Some Fundamental Shifts     215
The Body and Becoming a Person
The Body Is the Buddha Nature     223
The Journey Is Our Unfolding Relation with the Buddha Nature     227
Ego, the Body, and the Journey     233
The First Stages of the Journey     239
Aspects of the Unfolding Process     247
A Tibetan View of the Major Stages of Unfolding     254
The Body as Guide on the Journey      261
Encountering the Shadow     264
The Personal Body     270
The Next Layer: The Interpersonal Body     278
Layers of the Interpersonal Body     285
How Other People Help Us Meet Our Shadow     289
Integrating Further Depths of the Shadow     297
The Cosmic Body I: Transcending the Scientific Worldview     301
The Cosmic Body II: The Earth as Our Body     306
The Cosmic Body III: The Initiatory Process     310
The Cosmic Body IV: Until the Very End of Being     317
Who Am I?     324
Conclusion
Becoming Who We Are     333
A Glimpse of the Body Work     341
Index     383
About the Author     395

Editorial Reviews

Ray, a student of Tibetan Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, has written several other books and very evidently knows a great deal about meditation and the Tibetan Buddhist tradition as passed down by his unconventional guru. This book about the ultimate nonconceptual wisdom-what we can know in our bodies -is, paradoxically, highly conceptual and very slow going. The prose is labored ("a clear and accurate conceptual understanding of the subtle processes involved is necessary so we have the apparatus to receive, comprehend and give voice to our experience"). Frequently, Buddhist teachers use concrete examples or real-life stories to illustrate difficult or subtle points. Ray shares one important anecdote from his own life, but more tales from his or his students' lives would help. The critique of Western overdependence on thinking is certainly familiar, so the author's starting point is not new. The visualization exercises he offers in the book's appendix are comparatively fresh. But these instructions are probably more effective heard than read, and Ray's publisher indeed offers an audio program of related meditation practices. This book could use hard editing and clearer, more concrete language and examples. (Jan.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

“Through his own deep experience, Reggie Ray skillfully guides us into an awakened bodily life. He offers necessary, wise, and liberating practices of realization within our mysterious human form.”
—Jack Kornfield, PhD, author of A Path with Heart
 
“Touching Enlightenment provides readers with a fresh look at the steps required to turn our understanding of enlightenment into full embodiment—a vital process that determines the way in which we actually conduct our lives. An indispensible book for the serious practitioner.”
—John Daido Loori, abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery and author of True Dharma Eye: Master Dogen’s Three Hundred Koans
 
“Reggie Ray’s approach to the dharma is wonderfully fresh while also radically rooted in the foundation of the Buddha’s meditation instruction—mindfulness of body. He has a richly textured understanding of the lived body as the vessel of wisdom mind, as well as the carrier of all the karmic patterns that obscure this pristine awareness. Highly recommended.”
—John Welwood, author of Toward a Psychology of Awakening

From the Publisher